2019-09-16 - Arleta, CA - Sphere

Blue orb dances around moon w/ no light trails

In the early hours of Mon., Sept. 16, 2019, at 1:30am, I stepped out onto the back stoop of my house to call my dogs in for the night. The moon was full or almost full and very breath taking with a few small scattered clouds around it so I thought about grabbing my telescope to get a closer look when suddenly I saw a blue-ish orb hovering or even “dancing” around the moon. It’s movement varied from hovering and slowly circling the moon to erratic movements like quick reversals and 90 degree turns at incredible speeds. The orb, blue with what looked like some type of small white-ish circles on top had no trail or beam of light connected to it and it was very bright and visible despite the fullness and brightness of the moon. I work w/ lasers moving heads and spotlights for a living so I knew it wasn’t either of those. As the orb danced around the moon it moved under some static clouds yet didn’t extend it’s light to reflect onto the clouds. So with no light t! rail leading from the ground up to the orb and no light reflection on the low lying clouds (that were in between the orb and the moon), I determined that it was self-luminous. And the orb’s brightness and color were not diminished when it moved around in closer visual proximity to the moon (yet still very far from the moon distance-wise), which again, was very, very bright. I took out my new iPhone XR and recorded some video of the incident which I’ve posted and shown other lighting professionals and they have no idea what it could be either. I only recorded about 4 minutes of video but it’s quite compelling. Let me know if you’d like a copy. I’d love to have professionals look at it to help determine what it was. Thanks!